


and your hand's upon my knee

by wovenindelibly (sparklebitca)



Category: Social Network (2010) RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 22:12:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparklebitca/pseuds/wovenindelibly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Floating like feathers in a beautiful world is how Jesse and Andrew fall in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and your hand's upon my knee

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elegee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elegee/gifts).



> with many thanks as always to the partner person

 

“I would love,” Andrew says, in a voice that makes Jesse want to let him win at Super Mario Brothers 3, “to get to know you.”  

Everyone else present just moments ago at the table read is now inexplicably absent from the room - there’s coffee in the lounge next door, also some PAs are making a Subway run - and Andrew’s balancing his chair on the back two legs, one skinny hand spread out on the script in front of him.  Jesse wonders what he’d look like if he fell, and if Jesse would want to laugh.  He hopes he wouldn’t.  

“Come on, man.  I’m in town, you’re in town, let’s go have dinner somewhere.”  Andrew tips back further, teetering in excitement.  “We’ll get in character, I’ll be the Sam Seaborn to your Josh Lyman, man.”

“Garfield,” Jesse says, because, what?  “You’re trying to seduce me,” which is really the only appropriate response.  Also, _he’s British_ is the second, more nonsensical afterthought, and it really is stupid because number one, he already knew Andrew was British, and number two, he’s heard Andrew talk, and there’s always number one in the unlikely circumstance that number two slips his mind.  Which it hasn’t.  

“Is it going to work?”

Jesse looks back up from the toes of Andrew’s Chucks, where they’re balanced on the ground.  “I’m sorry?”

Andrew’s entire face is animated.  “Seduction!  Aaron Sorkin!  How we’re going to make this movie?”

“What’s your vintage gaming console of choice?” asks Jesse, and even though for a split second it crosses his mind to worry about whether or not that sounds as stupid as his epiphany as to Andrew’s accent, he stops worrying when Andrew opens his mouth again, and then he basically never worries about anything having to do with Andrew again.

***

Jesse’s impulse is to ask Andrew if he’s cold.  He doesn’t, because obviously Andrew’s cold, nothing’s ever looked colder than the red tips of Andrew’s ears.  Jesse got him earmuffs a few weeks back, shaped like very realistic yarn margaritas, which had been worn with glee and pride and regularity until they’d started shooting what they’re shooting, and to be honest, it’s weird to examine how much his feelings aren’t that hurt when he sees Andrew’s cold ears in the morning on the way to set.

Jesse doesn’t turn on the heat in the rent-a-car.  He doesn’t offer, and Andrew doesn’t say anything.  There is something about that lack of action that feels necessary on those mornings, the days that Jesse wakes up as Mark, prickly and isolationist like Mark.  Those days, there are no words when Andrew gets in, nothing except the sharp snap of silence in place of any music from the radio.  

There is a moment, after Jesse’s shifted into park, between Andrew’s hand on the car frame and Jesse’s elbow nudging his own door closed, when they are close enough that Jesse decides that he’s ready for today’s wrap, ready to be back in the cold Jeep with Andrew.  He’d rather do that than go to his trailer.  

“Thanks,” says Andrew, “for the ride.”

“You’re welcome,” says Jesse.

Andrew looks over to craft, and then back at Jesse, eyes dropping to where Jesse’s hands are fists in his pockets.  “See you,” he says, and turns before Jesse can crack character and smile, for which Jesse is grateful, always grateful.  He saves his smile for makeup.  

***

“Let me, can I?”

Jesse’s eyes, closed from the first gentle and confident brush-stroke against his cheek, open and squint simultaneously.  He wants to shake his head no, but the paintbrush is still right there, and it’ll smear green all over his face.  When it lifts, he opens his mouth to protest, but then Andrew’s there in front of him, sitting on the stool where the face-painter had just been perched, and he’s grinning like the biggest fucking geek, and it’s so, it’s just so, it’s just so actually beautiful, that smile on that face, that there is nothing for Jesse’s body to do but respond with a smile, his tapping fingers stilling on his knees.  

The way the paintbrush is balanced between Andrew’s thumb and his forefinger reminds Jesse of the way that Andrew’s body can move, doing just what Andrew tells it to do.

“Still a clover, okay?” Jesse asks, quickly and through stiff lips.  Andrew tsks and tightens his grip on Jesse’s chin, turning his face to the light before decisively rewetting the tip of the brush in the pot of green paint and drawing it in a circular motion over Jesse’s cheek.  

“You,” Andrew says jauntily, in complete contrast to the way the pads of his fingers are pressing against the soft hollow of Jesse’s jaw, “are going to be my good luck charm now.  I’m going to break all the mirrors and it’s not going to matter.”  

The paint is cool on Jesse’s face; everywhere else feels hot.

“It’s not going to matter,” he manages, “because.”

“Because you’re less gruesome than a rabbit’s foot,” Andrew agrees, and “there, all done.”  He pats Jesse’s leg.  “Pay the nice fellow.”

Jesse digs out seven bucks, five plus a tip for letting Andrew be ridiculous all over the kids area at the TD Garden.  

“You look smashing!” Andrew says.

“If you want to touch my face some more,” Jesse starts, but Andrew dives in -

“- if, if?”

“When you want to touch my face some more - “

“And don’t insinuate it’s all for the process, please, your face is plenty touchable without me needing to get in character.”

“ - just touch me,” Jesse finishes, and in a movie there’d be silence instead of laughter, but this is real life and it isn’t a movie in any way at all, which means that Andrew laughs just the way Jesse thought he would, and slings his arm through Jesse’s, because his laughter, Andrew’s laughter, is always just exactly what it ought to be.  What the silence in a movie is supposed to signify to the audience, Jesse thinks, that’s something they just didn’t need any indicators for.

***

“You are, you are, what are you?” Jesse gasps.  He’s had four glasses of wine, which is maybe one glass too many if they had just been planning to stick with what snacks are in the minibar, or possibly two glasses not enough, since they actually already ordered room service.

“I’m Spiderman, what the fuck do you think I am?” Andrew wheezes.  

“Oh, oh,” but he doesn’t really look like Spiderman, he’s just in red long-johns, and his legs look so skinny and long in those long-johns, long in the long-johns.  Jesse doesn’t drink to this level of verbal repetition very often, but it had seemed right when they were talking about it in the car on the way from Boston to Baltimore, kick off a weekend, no bigger plans for Halloween than going to an Apple store and helping Andrew get an iPhone 4, “you can’t, you can’t go out like that.”

“I can go out like _anything_ ,” Andrew says from the floor, which seems a long way from where Jesse is on the couch.  Half-upside-down and at an angle, Andrew’s face looks as red as his pyjamas, but it gets that red a lot, when Andrew’s cold, when Andrew’s hot, so maybe he won’t even need a Spiderman mask, just some goggles like Spidey-eyes.

“Like anything,” Jesse repeats, and it comes out more quietly than he’d thought it would.  He pulls his gaze away from Andrew’s face and looks down at his dangling arm, drooping from the couch to the hotel carpet.  Four days here, he thinks, in this room, in this city, and then Los Angeles, where it’s going to be different because it’s going to be Los Angeles, where he and Andrew went out for pasta and talked about the West Wing, seems like years ago because they’d had the same favorite episodes and Andrew had taken the last garlic knot and it hadn’t even mattered.

“Come here, down here,” Andrew says, and Jesse gets on the floor, close enough to feel the heat radiating from Andrew’s body even before Andrew crawls around and puts his head on Jesse’s shoulder.  Andrew’s hair is hot, even, where it collides with Jesse’s throat, a fine web for Jesse to put his strangely leaden hand into, carding against the heel of his palm.

“Here,” Andrew mutters.

“I am.”

“So, me too,” pushing his face, on fire, into the place where Jesse’s hair curls up from his neck, “I’m here.”

“Don’t, don’t say you’re so drunk right now,” Jesse says, and that’s when there’s a knock at the door, their food is here, Jesse’s body stiffens automatically, but Andrew’s laughing into his ear, not so drunk that he can’t just be Andrew and laughing at the timing of things.

“Get the door,” Andrew’s lips move and there’s the curl of his tongue, “and come back.”

***

“Why?” he asks Andrew, when his legs are splayed open and Andrew is lying between them with his back to Jesse’s chest, fingers dancing up along where the inseam of Jesse’s cords would be if Jesse were, in fact, wearing pants.  Jon Stewart is on the television, but Jesse doesn’t think it’s on Comedy Central, and Jon’s face dissolves into blue DVD screen nothing when Andrew hits _video source_ on the remote.

“Why not?  Because you hate it?  Because I know you hate it.”

“You know I hate it,” Jesse echoes, “but, I mean, I don’t hate it, not all of it.”

“Just your parts.”

“Just my parts.  Don’t skip the trailers.”

“You have seen these trailers a million times.  What the hell, they’re not even trailers, man, it’s the studio package, it’s not even boring trailers, it’s boring studio regurgitation, oh look, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, did you know it was coming soon, how shocking and new.  Aren’t you so glad I didn’t skip it?”  Nevertheless, Andrew lets the remote dangle and drop from his hand, lets it hit the mattress and stay there.  

The way he tilts his head back against Jesse says that it’s alright if Jesse wants to skip to the actual movie itself.  Which he doesn’t, but whatever.  Him hating his parts is usually good enough for why not watch, but he’s not going to try really hard to keep this from happening, because the truth of the matter is that he can’t hate his parts, not completely, because of how they formed, because of how he made them and arrived at their conception and carried them through, each part the counter to Andrew’s space, each spike the comforting fit to Andrew’s valleys, the Eduardo that Andrew created defining what Jesse can see of himself going into the Mark that he became.

When Andrew’s hand edges up under the crook of Jesse’s knee, lifting Jesse’s leg to bracket himself further in, Jesse closes his eyes.

“It’s okay,” Jesse says.  He flexes his fingers against Andrew’s collarbone.  “We can watch it, I won’t hate it.”

“I know you don’t hate this,” Andrew says, without a hint of superiority, “we’re brilliant,” because he’s still British, “we were _brilliant_.”  His pulse is very strong beneath Jesse’s palm.  “We’re going to win awards, we’re that brilliant.”

***

It’s very, very, very late.  

Jesse wants to tell Andrew that he drinks from the keg of glory, but it seems a little moot, when Andrew is already nestled as close as possible in a very rumpled tuxedo.  They have a whole limo in which to rumple tuxedos, and Andrew’s all up close, close enough for Jesse to physically take the statuette back, if he wants.  

But he likes how it looks in Andrew’s hand, so it can stay there.


End file.
